Page "L'Argent" Paragraph 6

Saccard decides to institute a financial establishment to fund these projects.

He is motivated primarily by the potential to make incredible amounts of money and reestablish himself on the Bourse.

In addition, Saccard has an intense rivalry with his brother Eugène Rougon, a powerful Cabinet minister who refuses to help him after his bankruptcy and who is promoting a more liberal, less Catholic agenda for the Empire.

Furthermore, Saccard, an intense anti-Semite, sees the enterprise as a strike against the Jewish bankers who dominate the Bourse.

( In a footnote, Ernest A. Vizetelly, the first British translator of L ' argent, draws a distinction between Zola's depiction of this aspect of Saccard's character and Zola's personal pro-Jewish beliefs as manifested in the later Dreyfus affair.